Participation – Page 4

Youth Workforce Dream Team: exploring complex consultation with games

[Summary: just launched online consultation game on youth workforce development]

One of the many people I got a chance to meet at BarCampUKGovWeb this Saturday was David Wilcox. It was through David's work on Useful Games that I first started thinking about the role games have to play in participation and consultation.

And so, with the challenge of creating an online consultation to engage young people in thinking about the different training needs of leaders and managers in the youth workforce – I was drawn to thinking about how approaching the consultation as a 'game' could help us get good quality consultation responses without falling back on a long-and-boring e-surveys that would ask people to rank abstract attributes of leaders and managers, and to choose which detailed training packages 'managers in general' might need.

So I built an interactive consultation game called Youth Workforce Dream Team – and it's online now.

Youth Workforce Dream Team

The game is targetted at young people but responses from all ages are welcome – and if you work with any groups of young people who may be interested in adding their responses, please do share the link, or download and share the attached flyer.

Play the game at: http://tinyurl.com/243wr7

Why a game?
The 'rules' of a game can offer a lot of information, and by creating interactivity and incentives games can provide a powerful way of collecting structured information from players, without asking players to force their responses into overly formal structured forms.

And whilst the Youth Workforce Dream Team game doesn't quite have the flashy cartoon graphics of a DemGame from Delib, in being built since the New Year on top of Drupal, and in having the flexibility for us to respond to feedback and adapt it throughout it's short lifespan (the consultation runs until the 18th February 2008), it should help gather some really useful responses to influence the future of leadership and management training of youth services in England.

Are you using games?
I'm also interested to hear about any experience readers may have had in using games for consultation. Either online or in physical spaces. Have you designed games to engage young people in consultations and decision making? What works well? What issues are there to look out for?

Attachment: Information Sheet.pdf

Government and young people online

I've just been in a session at BarcampUKGovWeb where we've been talking about how government provides information to young people, and involves young people in conversation with government (although we ran short on time to get onto that second and most important one). There's a lot to be talked about here – and 20 minutes only got us started. Below is a quick mindmap of what I gathered from the discussion:

I'd be happy to share the mindmap with anyone else who was in the session who would like to add to it. And very keen to continue the discussion…

Hear by Right 2008 launched at last

Hear by Right 2008

It's been a long time coming, and it's still got a long way to go – but finally this afternoon I've been able to set the new version of the Hear by Right website live with the newly launched 2008 Hear by Right resources and a brand new design and CMS back-end (drupal). I won't write too much about it now… as heading off to the pub to celebrate… but a bit of background for you:

Hear by Right is a standards framework for the involvement of young people used by 100s of organisations from local authorities to small voluntary sector organisations. It's designed to help organisations change to embed the voice and influence of youth into their everyday fabric. Although as I mentioned in response to a post by David Wilcox last year Hear by Right has a lot to offer work on user engagement and participation in all organisations – not just those that work with young people.

Through the Hear by Right website we've been trying to:

Create a space to share learning from the many 100s of authorities and organisations using Hear by Right to map and plan for change
Curate and share some of the best resources to support the participation of young people in decision making
Encourage organisations to be more open about the challenges and successes in engaging young people in decision making
Make clear the neccessary link between participation in decision making and real change for the lives of young people

The site's new design and back-end should help us do that just a little better – and puts in some more solid foundations for us to build on than those that were provided by the somewhat hacked-together CMS I wrote back in 1999 whilst learning ASP (those days are fortunately long behind me…).

And now that the site is launched… I can finally start pulling together some plans to explore different ways of visualising the data it holds… expect more on that soon.

Help the Young Researcher Network find resources for teaching online research skills…

The Young Researcher Network have just launched their programme of basic training for their network of 15 youth-led research projects (I created some resources for their launch conference in December last year) – and they're planning what training will come next. So far, with help from the Centre for Social Action they're going to be looking at:

the research process;
finding focus and defining a research question;
identifying a methodology;
considering the ethical implications of research.

But Darren and Antoinette from the Young Researcher Network also want to think about delivering training and support in online research methods for young people and I thought some readers here might be able to help them out with pointers to good resources, or some tips and tricks? They ask:

If you're a young person, perhaps as a young researcher, have you had any good training in how to use the internet well? Or have you just always known how to make use of the internet? Do you think you're an expert searcher – or are there things you want to know about?

And if you're involved in research – are there any good resources you can recommend for teaching good online research skills to the google generation, and supporting young people in online research?

If you think you could help – do drop them a comment on this post on their new blog – particularly as they're only just taking their first steps into the blosophere…

BarCampUKGovWeb – What should I be talking about on young people, government and web 2.0?

Whilst I'm on the topic of upcoming conferences and events, two days before I'll be exploring how various speakers think we should keep young people safe online, I should be at BarCampUKGovWeb – an altogether different sort of event.

A BarCamp “an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos, and interaction from attendees.” Participants are encouraged to contribute short sessions to the event – and I've just been thinking about the sorts of sessions I could present.

The BarCampUKGovWeb focus is on:

…creating a shared understanding and commitment to the vision for UK government web activity and helping establish the UK government Digital Network to bring together the community of webbies within central government and the wider public sector.

Quite a few projects I worked on over the last year have linked with UK Government web activity in one way or another. It's ranged from trying to provide youth-focussed content for government websites, pulling data out of Local Direct Gov or capturing video interviews with civil servants. And as the focus of most of my work is around young people's participation – I thought I would sketch out four possible mini-sessions linking 'young people, government and web 2.0' for the BarCampUKGov audience. You can see my four ideas pasted in below.

If you've got any other suggestions for topics – or want to suggest developments to any of the below – do get in touch using the comments below.

From an e-mail to the Google Group

Possible sessions

1. Protection and provision
Exploring issues around making sure under 18's are included, not excluded from the online civic space.

A bit theoretical – but with big practical implications.

2. Local names and national services
Using a case study of the Youth Opportunity Fund – a national programme, with a unique name (chosen by young people) in each local authority area – but for which we were trying to run a national publicity campaign working with (the then) DfES and DirectGov. Touches on technical issues linked to Local DirectGov – and organisational issues about policies for where content is hosted.

A very practical case study.

3. Working in partnership with government to consult and promote new policy
A couple of case studies of small scale projects for government (predominantly DfES) delivered by The National Youth Agency consulting with young people, or leading discussions and information-sharing about new policy with the field – incorporating the use of social media. Looking at how the social media element mostly 'just happened' – with logistical and policy issues being resolved along the way… and looking at whether this can be replicated – was the product of right people, right place, right time – or was enabled at the cost of
having a lesser impact.

4. Young people, online identity and the database state
I'm aware of at least one local authority building their own Social Networking website linked to the local Connexions database (holding personal information about young people). What happens when young people's online interaction comes within the ambit of the database state? Could we see social networks being linked to ContactPoint and other child protection databases? What about for over 18s?

Probably a bit of a theoretical discussion starter at the moment (unless I can work something up a little more in time for the BarCamp)

If I get chance to put together a full presentation for the BarCamp then I will, of course, share it here. And I'll aim to at least blog at/after the event on any discussions arising from the sessions I'm in.

One page guides: online mapping & google earth

These two one page guides were written for the Young Researcher Network launch conference where they were used as part of a session introducing social media tools for young researchers.

I've always found geographic and mapping visualisations to be really helpful in participation projects (as in this series of workshops on the local offer), and so these two guides explore how Google Earth and the My Maps feature of Google Maps can be used to add an online dimension to community mapping projects.

In the 'Custom Online Maps – with maps.google.com' guide I've tried a new technique, picking up on the annotated screen shot style of Sue Waters (example here) to show the different options available on My Maps.

You can download 'Custom Online Maps – with maps.google.com' here as a PDF for printing, or if you want to edit and adapt a copy, grab the original word file here.

The 'Mapping your community with Google Earth' guide explains:

Google Earth allows you to view high resolution satellite images of your local area on a 3D globe.

You can add annotations and notes onto Google earth to record information about your area.

You can add lines and shapes to mark out particular areas on your map.
You can share your annotations so that they can be accessed on Google Maps (maps.google.co.uk) or in other mapping tools.

You can download the 'Mapping your community with Google Earth' guide as a PDF here, or as a word document for editing it is available here.

This guide is only a very brief introduction and is very specific in having been designed for a 25 minute mini-workshop introducing Google Earth. I'm mainly sharing here for those who were at the workshop and have asked for a copy…

The Young Researcher Network launch conference where the workshop took place also explored how you can use Flickr to create a photo map. There is an earlier guide that mentions that to be found here.

Attachment: Online maps.pdf
Attachment: Google Earth.pdf
Attachment: Google Earth.doc
Attachment: Online maps.doc

One page guide: online surveys

Online surveys I wrote this one page guide on running an online survey in response to a suggestion from Damien at ChangeMakers Virtual Volunteering programme, and to go towards a section on online consultation and participation I've been putting together for Participation Works.

You can download the guide for printing here (PDF), or for editing here (Word doc).

The guide gives an overview of setting up and running an online survey with SurveyGizmo.com. The sharp-eyed reader will notice that in fact the screen-shot in the guide is of a SurveyMonkey survey. This is no particular reason for this other than I had that particular survey open at the time. And it shows diversity.

As with all the guides in this series, it is aimed at someone who has perhaps heard of online surveys (or blogs, rss and wikis etc.), but doesn't really know what they have to offer or how to get started. The guide is designed to at least show that it's not that scary – and that these online tools have real practical applications.

I'm planning to experiment with some more 'platform agnostic' guides in the near future – but so far I've found that because every provider names things slightly differently ('analyse responses', 'create report' etc.) it gets quite difficult to create something that will help a new user feel secure rather than worried…

Attachment: Online Surveys.pdf
Attachment: Online Surveys.doc

Online video for policy and participation: discussion starters

Common Craft Video

A quick pointer to two interesting sets of online videos that could be useful to youth workers and participation workers:

Youth-led media makers Catch 21 Productions have a YouTube channel where this week they've shared some short 'newsbite' video inputs on current policy issues. Nothing flashy. Just a really well scripted video perfect to introduce the issues in a group discussion. Here's their newsbite on sex education…

You can find more of the newsbites over here. And with YouTube you can subscribe to the channel to get updates by e-mail when new videos are available – meaning that if Catch 21 keep up the great work you can always have a video on hand for help exploring contemporary topics with any youth groups you are working with.

And I've recently discovered that explanation experts Common Craft not only offer the low-down on social media tools, but have also turned their technique to explaining School Finance in Calafornia. .

Ok, so unless you are in Calafornia this particular video may not be very useful to you – but it certainly raises questions for me about ways this style of video could provide stimulus and context for deeper consultation on complex issues.

What do you think? Have you seen other good examples of online video that could be used in youth work and participation work contexts?

(This post has two embedded videos in. If you're reading this in an e-mail update or an RSS reader you may not see the videos. Simply click through the title to the full post to view the videos.)

What tech tools would you use for engaging young people in decision making?

Using VoiceThread for Consultation and Participation

I've been asked by Participation Works to put together a series of pages on 'Technologies for Youth Participation' – so I'm looking out for all manor of technologies and tools that can be used to engage young people effectively in decision making and creating change.

From offline electronic voting keypads and twittering at events, through to collaborative online forums that allow young people to influence a policy process over the long term – I'm interested in hearing from you about:

processes you might have been involved in that have used technology to engage young people in decision making

and/or
new and existing tools that you think have real potential for young people's participation in decision making and why

Drop me a line or use the comments to share your stories and suggestions.

As an aside, it's great to see Participation Works getting ever closer to fully joining the social media world with the addition this week of 'Share This' links, and the news that Takover Day at PW brought participation workers blogging a step nearer.

PW introduces share this link

The statistical invisibility of children and young people

Age Group on surveys

How different is a 6 year old from a 15 year old?

And how different is a 36 year old from a 45 year old?

You will probably agree with me that the difference in the first case is a lot more significant than that in the second.

So how come the 36 year old and 45 year old are likely to find themselves getting their own age brackets on many surveys (are you aged: 25 – 35?, 36 – 45?, 46 – 55? etc.) when the 6 year old and 15 year old will most likely find themelves lumped together a in the 0 – 19 bracket?

Ok. Here are some possible reasons:

Reason #1: Relevance . We don't generally get 6 year olds to fill in surveys. And indeed, if your survey is about insurance product choice then I would suggest you're right to avoid burdening a child with questions about attitudes towards fiscal risk.

However – if you survey is about some relatively universal experience without a legal limit on who might be participating in it – like, for example, spending time in a community space, accessing the internet or feeling save (or not) crossing the road – then perhaps you should be including the 6 year old and certainly the 15 year old, in your survey.

Reason #2: Limited sample. We may suceed in surveying the 6 year old and the 15 year old, (and the 7 through 14 year olds) but we just don't manage to survey all that many of them compared to, for example, the number of 25 – 34 year olds we survey. So we put the 0 – 19 year olds together in a big category to give us a statistically significant group.

Reason #3: Skills. Carrying out a survey with children and young people can require specific skills and training that many researchers may lack.

Reason #4: Consent and ethics. There may be questions around the capacity of children and young people to give informed consent to taking part in a survey, and about whether the survey will raise questions on issues children should be protected from thinking about.

Do the reasons cut it?

Not really. Reason #1, 'Relevance', is important. It should tell us that as soon as a survey significantly covers issues that are relevant to young people they should be included in the survey data. Issues #2, 3 & 4 are ones we can and should work around.

Why does it matter?

Without including children and young people in the surveys and datasets being used by policy makers and practioners to make decisions on a day-to-day basis, we make children and young people 'statistically invisible'. And that can have a big (quite possibly very negative) impact on decisions made that affect children and young people's lives.